Help:Talk page

A talk page is one of several places where you can speak with your fellow editors. They are an older, purely wikitext-based form of article comments and Message Walls. They are primarily used to hash out improvements to a single page or to the community as a whole.

Contents

How to leave a message

Article talk page

The link to the talk page is under the Edit dropdown

To get to an article talk page (while visiting the article itself), click the "Edit" button, then find the "Talk" option—which is usually at the very bottom of the drop-down list. Click on it, and you'll be taken to the talk page.

To leave an article talk page message, follow these steps:

Click "Add topic" ( ) to create a new discussion area.

Enter your message in the editor window. At the end of your message, type four tildes ("~~~~") or click the signature button in the toolbar. This will generate a signature with your name when you hit Publish.

You can enter the title of your message in the "Subject/headline" text field near the Publish button, which will become the title of a new section. You can also choose to do this manually by inserting text between pairs of equal signs (== ==), creating the title for a new section (it is recommended that this is the first line in the message).

If needed, it can be helpful to click the Preview button to check how your message looks.

Click Publish.

To respond to a talk page message, simply edit that section of the talk page, and indent your reply. You can indent by putting a colon (":") at the front of each line. Be sure to sign your response with ~~~~.

Article talk pages are often a place to resolve disagreements about an article, so remember to be friendly and civil in all of your interactions there.

User talk page

To get to a user talk page from a user profile, click the "Talk page" tab. To leave the user a message, follow these steps:

Click the "Leave message" ( ) button at the top of the talk page.

Enter your message in the editor window. As with article talk pages, type four tildes ("~~~~") at the end of your message to generate a signature with your username when you hit Publish.

Enter the title of your message in the "Subject/headline" text field near the Publish button.

If needed, it can be helpful to click the Preview button to check how your message looks.

Click Publish.

To respond to a talk page message, simply edit that section of the talk page, and indent your reply. You can indent by putting a colon (":") at the front of each line. And don't forget to use ~~~~ to sign your response!

Updating to Comments and Walls

Fandom has developed features that have improved the conversational experience for articles and user profiles. For articles, we have Comments, allowing users and readers to instantly comment on a page and share their thoughts. For user profiles, we have Message Walls, which offer a more intuitive way to talk with your fellow editors. Walls, for example, are threaded, so they keep dialogues in one place. They also notify all participants when there are updates to a specific conversation, and can let anyone follow a conversation for updates.

We encourage communities to use these features for easier commenting. If they are not already enabled on your community, local administrators can turn them on in WikiFeatures.

Archiving talk pages

How to do it

Archives of talk pages are made when a talk page becomes too long for either the user to easily find a past conversation or for one's web browser to render the talk page fast enough. An archive is simply a subpage of the user talk page where old conversations are stored (e.g. [[User talk:Foo/Archive]]).

To create an archive, simply cut (Ctrl + X) all the old conversations from your talk page from beginning to end. Then, create a new page in your user talk space (User talk:Foo/Archive 1) and paste (Ctrl + V) the old conversations there. If you already have one archive, create a second archive page (e.g. [[User talk:Foo/Archive 2]]) to avoid the archive being too long too!

Archiving etiquette

When archiving old discussions, it is customary to leave current, ongoing discussions on the existing Talk page. In some cases, a header text is also preserved. Also, it is good to leave a link near the top of your talk page to the archive so users can easily find previous discussions.

It is recommended that you do not attempt to archive another user's talk page. These are not subject to the recommendations on this page, and each user may choose alternate means of archiving their own talk page, including choosing not to archive at all, but to instead remove old messages. Although, since those messages are other users' contributions, this is generally rude to do and in bad taste, with archival being more polite and considerate of what others say.

When archiving your talk page by moving it, be aware that this causes the newly-created archive to be added to the watchlist of any user who was previously watching your talk page. This could be annoying for people who have no desire to watch your talk archives.